“You are not a father, I suppose, Sergeant?”
Hand shook his head.
“Nor I,” Wax admitted, “but I did have twenty-three siblings so I know how difficult it can be for a father to say no. Edgar chose Princess of Mars, and Princess of Mars was recorded in Lloyd’s registry. At that time, I was looking for a ship of my own, having been retired from Cunard, but being in no wise ready for retirement, and saw this ship. Love at first sight, it was. I sank my pension into it, and have never regretted it for a moment.”
“At the transfer of ownership,” Hand said, “could you not have changed the name to something of your own choosing then?”
“Aye, that I could have,” Wax admitted. “However, Major Burroughs prevailed upon me to have a chat with young Edgar.” He chuckled at the remembrance. “Oh, the stories that lad could tell, had me enthralled in my seat in just a few minutes, tales of a Mars we’ve never known – and his Mars had princesses, too, like Red Indians, and Green Swordsmen like great four-armed frogs, and an Earthman who talk to the Great Martian White Apes…”
“If only Mars had Great White Apes,” Hand mused wryly.
“Oh, I know how it sounds, Sergeant,” Wax said with a snort and a smirk. “It is a Mars that never was, probably never will be, but the way he spun those yarns…well, I decided to keep it Princess of Mars, and, who knows? Perhaps I’ll live long enough to ferry young Edgar Burroughs to Mars one day, and he can write us some proper rattling good stories.”
Other than Captain Wax and Sergeant Hand, there were two others on the aethership bridge, First Officer Dennis Neumann and Midshipman Lewis Mark. As the moment of lifting approached, Captain Wax and his crew busied themselves with a myriad of details, checking the electrics, the hyper-pressured steam boilers, the coils for extracting oxygen from the aether between worlds, and, of course, the repulsors along the hull which provided lift and the mighty aether-engines that pushed them through the void.
“Electrics?” Captain Wax called.
“Charged, sir,” the First Officer replied.
“Engage instrumentality circuits.”
“Aye, sir.”
Dials and gauges flickered to life, glowing softly in the gathering dusk. The First Officer closed several switches in a row. The running lights and arc lamps outside the aethership illuminated the surrounding berth with a brightness not known naturally on Venus. At the same time, Captain Wax turned up the gaslamp above the plotting-table and unrolled a navigation chart, setting several others aside. Peering unobtrusively at the chart, Hand saw what he took to be the curve of the planet and the rise of the atmosphere and clouds; lines of force, electromagnetic measurements and a dizzying array of numerals and mathematical symbols covered the chart.
“Hydraulics and pneumatics, Number One?”
“All steam plants to power, sir.”
“Coils?” the Captain asked.
“At the ready, sir,” Mr Neumann reported. “All readings indicate optimal operation once we clear the atmospheric aether.”
“Very good,” Captain Wax acknowledged. “Are we cleared for lifting?”
“Control has cleared us for lifting, sir,” confirmed the First Officer. “Repulsors are powered up; the Chief Engineer reports the aether-engines fully charged.”
“Collectors and capacitors, Mr Neumann?”
“Ready for deployment at your order, sir.”
“Very good; order all lines…”
The door slid open and Lady Cynthia Barrington-Welles stepped onto the bridge.
“Madam!” Captain Wax exclaimed. “You are in a restricted area. Passengers are not allowed on the bridge.”
She glanced at Hand, and Hand wished he were invisible.
“Sergeant Hand is here at my invitation,” Wax explained. “I must ask you to either go to your cabin or the saloon.”
“If you will examine my papers, Captain,” she said.
“I will not have…”
“Please, Captain.”
Reluctantly and wearing a scowl that would have sent the Archbishop of Canterbury packing, Captain Wax grabbed a leathern wallet from her pale hand. As he read the documents he did not stop scowling, but equal amounts of wonder and consternation crept into his features. He handed the documentation back.
“Very well, Lady Cynthia, but stay…”
“Pay no mind to me, Captain, I will make sure I keep out of your way,” she assured him with a smile.
At the sight of her smile, the grizzled aethership Captain nearly returned one of his own, then remembered how put out he was, and deepened his frown, muttering about bad luck, interfering government officials, and women having no place on an aethership bridge. Hand tried to snare a peek at the credentials Lady Cynthia had shown Captain Wax, but she was much too quick.
“Sergeant Hand,” she greeted.
“Evening, Lady Cynthia,” Hand said.
“I thought Captain Folkestone might be here.”
“He is in his cabin.”
“Familiarising himself with the documents he is carrying?”
Hand glanced at her with a raised eyebrow. “I would not know anything about that, Lady Cynthia.”
“No, of course not,” she replied.
Hand frowned. Had she just winked conspiratorially at him? Or had she just blinked? Her eyepatch made it difficult to tell.
“How are you feeling, Sergeant Hand?”
Captain Wax cleared his throat, loudly.
“We shall talk later, Sergeant,” she whispered.
Hand nodded, not wanting to tax Captain Wax’s patience any further. She was a beautiful woman, he thought, but Folkestone was quite correct about how annoying she could be.
“Order all lines released,” Captain Wax said.
“Lines away, sir.”
Wax glanced to the midshipman. “Quarter power to the repulsors, zero declination, lift to two hundred feet, Mr Mark.”
The young midshipman called out their increasing altitude.
“Turn two-seven-three, repulsors to half, declination ten, engines at slow,” the Captain ordered in a rapid fire.
The midshipman did as he was told, repeating each order and finishing with a crisp “Aye!” Captain Wax quickly called out changes in course and power as they climbed toward the thick cloud covering of Venus.
Sergeant Hand stepped to the wide crystalline window that curved along the entire hemisphere of the bridge. He looked not to the receding sight of Port Victoria, built from British ingenuity and looking like a part of the Blessed Isle transported to sultry Venus, but at the dark stony mass of Yzankranda, holder of ancient secrets and dire sorrows. As far as he was concerned, the place could sink out of sight forever, and not be missed.
Except, he thought with a wistful smile, for the segir.
But there was not nearly enough segir on all the inhabited worlds to blot the memory of his loss.
He felt a soft hand on his shoulder, knew that if he looked at her, he would see a compassionate and encouraging smile, just what he did not want. He took a step from Lady Cynthia, not looking back, and felt her hand slip away. He concentrated on the dwindling landscape, shimmering through a veil of secret tears.
“Approaching cloud boundary, sir,” the First Officer said. “One thousand yards and closing.”
“Engage stabilisers at five hundred, Mr Neumann.”
“Five hundred yards, aye, sir.”
“Engines at full, Mr Mark.”
“Engines full, aye, sir,” the midshipman repeated.
Captain Wax uncapped a speaking tube and barked: “All hands brace for periphery turbulence.”
“Engaging stabilisers,” the First Officer reported. The slight shuddering which had started at their nearness to the roiling clouds suddenly ceased.
Hand sighed as the clouds closed around their vessel and all sight of Venus was finally lost. The region of the clouds was like another country, with tempestuous rivers of wind, vivid streams of crackling iridescent fire and tranquil bays,
with unknown continents and pastel archipelagos that seemed as solid as any coastline until the aethership passed through them.
The Princess of Mars lurched to port, then dropped. Hand grabbed a railing and hugged it.
“Bow repulsors to three-quarters,” Captain Wax said calmly. “Adjust trim.”
“Aye, sir,” responded Midshipman Mark.
“Extend collectors, Mr Neumann. Engage coils.”
“Collectors fully extended, coils operating, sir.”
“Mr Mark, come to heading two-six-three, at my mark, set declination to twenty-two.” The Captain looked up from his chart to a chronometer. “Mark.”
“Heading two-six-three, declination twenty-two, aye, sir.”
The aethership shot up through the atmosphere, slicing aside the thick swirling clouds. Hand gazed at the crystalline window, at the sweeping vapours that obscured all vision around the ship, at the blue streamers of static electricity that crawled across every metal fitting on the exterior. And he wondered what insanity had possessed him, asking to be on the bridge during lift-off. The ship shimmied and jerked about. Hand gripped the brass rail for dear life.
“Well, that puts Venus behind us,” Captain Wax murmured.
Hand looked up and saw star-sprinkled space through the bridge window, the pale orb of Venus receding. He looked around him. Lady Cynthia was studying the aethership’s brass registry plaque, Captain Wax was pouring over his charts, Mr Neumann was consulting various dials and gauges, and young Mr Mark was at the wheel, staring dutifully ahead. Hand let go of the rail, smoothed down his uniform, and clasped his hands behind his back.
“Is it always like that, Captain?” Hand asked. “Lifting off from Venus, I mean?”
Captain Wax looked up from his charts and smiled. “Oh, no, Sergeant Hand, sometimes the atmosphere is very turbulent.”
“Yes, it did seem rather smooth,” Hand murmured.
“Sergeant Hand, would you care to join me in the saloon for a drink?” Lady Cynthia asked.
“I think I could use…” He stopped abruptly. “Thank you for the invitation, Lady Cynthia, but I must beg off. I’d best check in with Captain Folkestone and see if he needs me for anything.”
“You will remember me to Captain Folkestone, will you not?” Lady Cynthia said.
“Yes, of course, ma’am,” Hand stammered. “I’d best be…”
“And tell him I am looking forward to seeing him at mess tonight.” She looked to Captain Wax. “At the Captain’s table?”
“It would be my great honour, Lady Cynthia,” he grumbled graciously.
Hand nodded, eager to be off. He looked to Captain Wax. “Thank you for indulging me, sir.”
“Not at all, Sergeant Hand, it was my pleasure to be able to show you what the old girl can do,” the space captain replied with a thin smile. “Puts the big aether-liners to shame, is my thinking. Perhaps you will be my guest when we make planet-fall on Mars. Landings are always so much more exciting than lift-offs.”
“Yes, sir,” Hand said as he fled. “As my duties allow.”
As the door slid closed, he thought he heard the old man chuckle softly, but he could not be sure. After a quick trip to the W.C., where he swore he would from now on leave the bridge of an aethership to aethership officers, he reported to Captain Folkestone in his cabin.
“How did you find your view from the bridge, Sergeant?” Folkestone asked.
“A bit on the boring side, sir,” Hand replied. “Not quite what I thought it would be.”
“Things never are,” Folkestone sighed.
The Captain was surrounded by a mountain of documents, taken from three large dispatch cases now against the bulkhead.
“Is there anything I can do to help, sir?”
“No, I am just about finished,” Folkestone replied. “I was already mostly familiar with it. We received reports from American and Texan Venusian settlements, even the Germans and Chinese…”
“Not the French, I’ll wager!”
Folkestone smiled. “No, not the French.”
“No surprise there,” Hand snorted.
“They all have pieces of the puzzle, but none of them have been able to fit the pieces together, or don’t want to,” Folkestone continued. “If we put all this together with what I’ve learned from the Admiralty and Baphor-Ta, then…well, it is bad, very bad.”
“Sir, if this conspiracy is as widespread as you say, across the inhabited worlds, with the Dark Gods themselves trying to break through to our material realm, once again establishing an empire of blood and terror, how can we hope to rise victorious?” Hand asked. “I mean…the Dark Gods, sir! And our own people will not even admit to it, clinging to the fictions of evil masterminds, ruddy anarchists, and bloody infernal devices!”
“As usual, Sergeant Hand,” Folkestone said, putting aside the last of the papers and reaching for a dispatch case, “it is up to you and I to save civilisation, even if it doesn’t deserve to be.”
Hand grinned and nodded. “As you say, Captain.”
Together, they collated the documents, placed them in the proper file folders, and returned them to the dispatch cases. A brass key on a chain around Folkestone’s neck secured the locks. They then stowed the cases out of sight.
“Quite a bit of information, sir.”
“I am quite happy to be through all that,” Folkestone said. “I don’t know about you, but I could certainly use a drink. Care to join me in the saloon for a pint before dinner?”
“I’d just as soon not, sir,” Hand replied.
Folkestone thought his sergeant looked a little green around the gills (so to speak, since Hand hailed from neither Triton nor Lemuria) after his visit to the bridge, but he had kept his comments to himself. Hand was hardly a space-virgin, but the view from the bridge was different. A little cloud-turbulence seen up close? Or was it something else?
“Are you sure nothing upset you on the bridge?” Folkestone asked. “You actually look like you need a drink. After all, every shake and shimmy is more pronounced on an aethership’s bridge than in the hull. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Crikey, sir!” Hand exclaimed. “With all due respect, put a bloomin’ cork in it! I was coshed insensible by bloody minions of the Dark Gods, nearly poisoned to death with dream-spice, almost went stark barking mad from having my brain peeled like an onion, don’t half know what’s real or not seeing dinosaurs in Piccadilly and worlds without Queen Victoria – God save her! – sitting on the throne, and had my girl die in my arms!” He paused a half-breath. “And I got drunk on real Venusian segir in a real Venusian pub, and was gifted a full bottle said segir, and suffered the tragedy of seeing said full bottle shatter against the cobbles – all in one night! So, maybe if I don’t feel like putting a pint in my churning stomach, maybe it’s ‘cause I’ve had a rough couple of days, and it’s nothing to do with this great misnamed aethership bucking its way through the clouds like a ruddy anaconda with epilepsy!”
Hand sat heavily into a padded club chair.
“Do you feel better now, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir, I do. Thank you for asking.”
“You go ahead and rest awhile then.”
“Thank you, sir, I will,” Hand replied. “Maybe I might be up to joining you in a bit.”
“A bit?”
“Yes, sir, a little bit.”
“Very well, a little bit then.”
“A long little bit,” Hand amended.
Folkestone reached for his uniform jacket. “I did not mean to imply you could not handle being on the bridge during heavy turbulence.”
“Light turbulence, sir,” Hand said. “Hardly noticed it at all.’
“In that case, I’m sorry you found it so dull.”
“Yes, sir; actually the only excitement was when Lady…” Hand stopped in mid-sentence, grimaced, and squeezed his eyes shut. He sat waiting for the door to open and close. As the silence endured, he opened his eyes and saw Folkestone staring at him,
fists on hips. “Sir?”
“Finish your sentence, Sergeant Hand,” Folkestone said. “That is an order.”
Hand squeezed his eyes shut again, hoping he still might be in a dream-spice den, or dead, but when he opened his eyes, the Captain was still scowling expectantly at him.
“Lady Cynthia came onto the bridge,” Hand said.
“Damned infuriating woman!” Folkestone snorted. “Is it too much to hope Captain Wax ejected her out the nearest airlock?”
“Well, he clearly did not want her presence on the bridge,” Hand replied. “But when he asked her to leave, she showed him some papers or credentials in a leather pocket-case. He backed off quickly after that and let her stay.”
“Did you get a gander at them?”
Hand shook his head. “It wasn’t for lack of trying, sir.”
“I know she runs errands for her father and has ties to the Diplomatic Corps, but she has secrets I would like to learn,” the Captain said, touching his chin contemplatively.
I am sure she feels the same way, sir, Hand thought, but a strong sense of self-preservation stopped him from speaking.
Suddenly, Folkestone nailed Hand with an icy glare. “When were you going to tell me the Consul had failed?”
“Sir?”
“Since you did not say anything, I assumed you had received amended transit orders from that fellow, Argent, before departure,” he said accusingly.
“I really didn’t pay much attention sir,” Hand admitted. “You know how I am with paperwork.”
Folkestone sighed.
“Of course, even had I gone to Argent…well, it’s not like we could afford to take a later transport. ‘Sides, how could I really keep her off this one?”
“You could have tripped her,” Folkestone spat. “Sprained her ankle or something.”
“Sir?”
“Oh, never mind,” he said with a great sigh. “I think I need that drink now more than ever.”
Succumbing to his conscience, Hand said: “She might be in the saloon, sir.”
Folkestone forced a smile. “Well, if I can face the Dark Gods, I suppose I can face Lady Cynthia Barrington-Welles.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Coming, Sergeant?”
“I think I will, sir,” Hand replied. “I’m feeling much better.”
Shadows Against the Empire (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 1) Page 18